When an operation is carried out by a business application, processing is carried out while exchanging data among a plurality of applications (hereinbelow, represented as “AP”). If APs are designed in advance on the premise that they will work together in such cases, a multiplicity of already-existing dedicated interaction technology (such as CORBA (see Non-Patent Document 1) or SOAP and COM (see Non-Patent Document 2)) can be used to enable exchange of data between the APs. These methods (the dedicated interaction technology) can be used, for example, when the search result of a Web AP that searches for information and displays the result is scheduled for input to a separate document-input AP and the information-search Web AP provides a Web service interface that uses, for example, SOAP, and moreover, the document-input AP corresponds to this Web service.
On the other hand, demand often arises for data exchange with other APs that was not anticipated at the time of designing an AP. For example, when a Web AP in the above-described case does not offer interaction means or, even if interaction means is offered, the above-described document-input AP is not compatible with this interaction means, the user must manually move values for each item. Such procedures entail not only time and trouble, but the procedures are also difficult to explain to other workers.
Patent Document 1 describes a technique for carrying out batch data exchange between APs without rebuilding an already existing AP. The AP interaction system disclosed in Patent Document 1 includes: an interaction information collection unit, a data converter, a communication unit, a configuration DB, a data output unit, and a system-setting program. The AP interaction system having this configuration operates as described below.
In a configuration-generation phase, the system-setting program registers in the configuration DB, in accordance with input from the user the following: target AP names, relevant AP names, an interaction method, coordinate information of data that are to be collected from related windows, and a data conversion method. In an interaction phase, the interaction information collection unit identifies the display window of the target AP and the relevant AP in accordance with interaction procedures that have been stored in the configuration DB and collects interaction data from the display window of the target AP according to the coordinate information in the interaction procedures. The interaction information collection unit next transfers the interaction data that have been collected to interaction AP, and the processing result of the interaction AP is transferred to the data output unit by way of a communication unit. The data output unit supplies the processing result that has been received to the display window of the target AP and the relevant AP.
XPath (XML Path Language) (see Non-Patent Document 4) is known as a language for designating items in tree-structure data such as HTML that describes a Web page and XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) for representing the screen configuration by XML (see Non-Patent Document 3). In addition, Servlet (see Non-Patent Document 5) is known as a function for executing a program on a Web server.    Patent Document 1: JP-A-2005-285009 (paragraphs 0037-0041)    Non-Patent Document 1: “CORBA” (online) Object Management Group, searched Nov. 15, 2006, Internet URL: http://www.omg.org/technology/documents/formal/corba_iiop.htm    Non-Patent Document 2: “COM” (online) Microsoft, (searched on Nov. 15, 2006) Internet URL: http://www.microsoft.com/japan/com/compapers.asp    Non-Patent Document 3: “XAML” (online) Microsoft (searched Nov. 15, 2006) Internet URL: http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms752059.aspx    Non-Patent Document 4: “XPath” (online) The World Wide Web Consortium, (searched Nov. 15, 2006) Internet URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath    Non-Patent Document 5: “Servlet” (online) Java Community Process (searched Nov. 15, 2006) Internet URL: http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/final/jsr154/index.html